Paperback reviews

Charles Osborne rounds up some more paperbacks

Marcel Proust was surely the greatest novelist of the 20th century and Tadie is generally regarded as the world authority on the French writer. His scrupulously researched, definitive biography redefines the way we look at Proust both as artist and as man, and provides an engaging picture of the intellectual and social universe that fed his art, along with an authoritative critical reading of Proust's masterpiece, A la recherche du temps perdu.

Me and My Shadows, by Lorna Luft, Pan Books, £7.99

Lorna Luft may not be a very interesting performer, but she is, after all, a daughter of Judy Garland, who was not only a great singer but also a superb movie actress. The shadows Lorna lives with are those cast by Judy, whose life was a dizzy roller-coaster of successes (professional) and disasters (personal), and this autobiography, sometimes amusing, sometimes harrowing, but always unsparingly candid, is especially valuable for the light it casts on those shadows.

The Bronte Myth, by Lucasta Miller, Vintage, £8.99

The Bronte biography industry continues to flourish, ranging from pious accounts in Victorian books to Freudian psychobiographies, and from sensation-seeking rubbish to meticulous works of sober scholarship. Each generation has rewritten the Brontes to reflect changing attitudes towards the role of the woman writer, towards sexuality, and towards the very concept of personality. This sharp-witted and erudite new volume explores Charlotte's attempts to mould her own and her sister Emily's public image and then follows the family through their many incarnations at the hands of biographers, playwrights, film-makers, novelists, choreographers, and even the designers of souvenir tea-towels.

About Modern Art by David Sylvester Pimlico, £12.50

David Sylvester was the author of highly acclaimed volumes on Henry Moore, Magritte and Giacometti, and the curator of numerous major art exhibitions. He died last June, and these pieces on 20th-century artists, written between 1948 and 2000, reveal him at his most perceptive. This is not drily academic criticism, but a collection of stylish, witty essays on a wide range of artists from Matisse and Klee to Gilbert and George. No one interested in art can fail to enjoy, and indeed learn from, Sylvester's writing.